Gigabyte 8N-SLI Royal — a Motherboard Based on NVIDIA nForce4 SLI (Intel Edition)

We have recently reviewed the first motherboard from Gigabyte of the Royal
class (8I955X Royal),
which includes the richest models in terms of features and bundles
according to the new classification of this company. Obviously, all
our general comments and remarks about the bundles hold true in case
of the 8N-SLI Royal, because these models have similar package contents.
Their main difference lies in a chipset. Let's find out what this
top model on NVIDIA nForce4 SLI (Intel Edition) can offer its users.

The motherboard possesses rich functionality, but its PCB layout offers no special inconveniences in terms of assemblage. Among its relatively small drawbacks we may note the locations of FireWire and SATA (it's inconvenient to plug cables, when a PCI card is installed into the terminal slot), crowded connectors around memory slots, and the location of audio ins (the second video card will block them). Access to the only jumper is not hampered even when the motherboard is in a case. There is a brief description of jumper functions on the PCB. Gigabyte offers another 8N-SLI model, the Pro modification: it lacks the additional IDE/SATA RAID controller, the second gigabit network adapter, U-Plus DPS option, and its bundle does not include a Bluetooth adapter.

The 4-phase switching voltage regulator of the processor incorporates four 3000 uF capacitors, four 1000 uF capacitors, and five 560 uF ones. The board also contains a memory voltage regulator (incorporating eight 1000 uF capacitors reinforced with L elements). In general, critical circuits incorporate electrolytic capacitors from Sanyo and United Chemi-Con (high quality and reliable components). The board incorporates a proprietary Gigabyte technology — DPS: when an additional VRM is installed into a special slot (in this case it's U-Plus DPS), the number of phases in a CPU voltage regulator is increased to 8. Theoretically, such a scheme provides better operating stability, which is very critical for overclocking. Motherboard dimensions — 305x245 mm (full-sized ATX, nine-screw mount, all motherboard edges are firmly fixed).

System monitoring (ITE IT8712F-A, according to BIOS Setup):

CPU, memory, and battery voltage, +3.3 V and +12 V

RPM of 3 fans

CPU temperature (by the embedded CPU sensor).

Onboard ports, sockets, and connectors

Processor socket (Socket 775, we have no precise information on its compatibility so far, but this motherboard should support any modern processors from Intel: Celeron D, Pentium 4, Pentium D (except for the 820 model, where only one core will be operable), Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, Pentium Extreme Edition)

4 x DDR2 SDRAM DIMM (up to 4 GB DDR2-400/533/667 without ECC supports dual channel mode, if 2/4 modules of the same capacity and organization are installed in pairs)

2 x PCIEx16 for video accelerators (either only one of them works (in x16 mode), or both of them operate in SLI mode — x8/x8)

2 x PCIEx1 (one of them is physically unavailable when two video cards are installed in SLI mode)

2 x PCI

Power connectors: standard ATX 2.2 (24 pins, you can also plug a standard 20-pin connector, but you'd better not use such powerful components as top PCIE video cards or you should use the below mentioned 4-pin connector), 4-pin ATX12V to power up the processor, 4-pin (peripheral) power connector for powerful video cards (it's mandatory in case of SLI)

DPS connector (in this case it's U-Plus DPS)

Connector for a board that switches PCIEx16 modes (SLI/normal)

1 x FDD

3 x IDE (Parallel ATA) for six ATA133 devices. Hard disks connected to the two chipset-based slots can form RAID 0, 1, 0+1 or 5 with chipset-based SATA hard disks. Hard disks connected to the third slot (based on the additional Promise controller) can form RAID 0 and 1 with SATA hard disks connected to the same controller

6 x SATA-II (Serial ATA II) for six SATA300 devices — 4 of them are in the chipset; connected hard disks can form RAID 0, 1, 0+1, or 5 with "chipset" PATA disks. The other two are based on the additional Promise controller, connected hard disks can form RAID 0 and 1 with PATA hard disks connected to the same controller

A rear panel bracket with a holder that fixes the connection between two video cards with the above mentioned bridge (the bracket is installed on the rear panel between PCIEx16 slots and blocks the PCIEx1 slot located between them)

An additional board that switches PCIEx16 slot modes (Gigabyte
3D1 SLI/normal mode; the first mode is necessary, when you install
a video accelerator of the Gigabyte
3D1 series, that combines two NVIDIA video processors on a single
card and thus requires specific organization of PCIEx16, where it's
installed)

Fan that can be latched on the northbridge heatsink

Rear I/O shield

CD with drivers and proprietary Gigabyte utilities, as well as Norton Internet Security 2005.

Note the skillful design of the U-Plus DPS module that provides high quality passive cooling for all field-effect transistors in the power converter circuit. It even incorporates a cooler with a heat pipe. On the other hand, field-effect transistors in the main circuit of the on-board power converter (which can operate without DPS) enjoy no special cooling (they have to do with an airflow from the CPU cooler). But it should be noted that each channel of the converter contains three field-effect transistors instead of only two. The bundle of proprietary Gigabyte utilities includes applications to overclock and monitor your system, to change a graphics logo at startup, to search for the latest BIOS version via Internet and to flash it, etc. Nothing unusual or really interesting.

We used BIOS F1, the only available BIOS version at the time of our tests. The later Version F2 adds support for both cores in the Pentium D 830 processor. The mentioned BIOS parameters are available in this version, but the viability of non-standard settings hasn't been tested. You can see a complete list of settings by pressing Ctrl+F1 in the main BIOS Setup menu.

Preliminary test results

Testbed configurations:

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.46 GHz

Memory: 2 x Corsair XMS2-4300 CM2X512A-4300C3PRO (DDR2-533, 3-3-3-8)

HDD: Samsung SP1213C (SATA), 7200 rpm

Video card: ATI Radeon X800 XT, 256 MB DDR

OS: Windows XP SP2

Gigabyte 8N-SLI Royal is only the second model on nForce4 SLI IE, reviewed on our web site. So we published not only the results of both motherboards on this chipset, but also the results of a top motherboard from Gigabyte on the competing chipset from Intel (i955X) as far as their functionality and prices are concerned.

The new model from Gigabyte is slightly outperformed by the motherboard from MSI (up to 3%), it's almost on a par with the model on i955X, and it even shoots forward in games. The results are not complete so far, wait for the roundup of motherboards on NVIDIA nForce4 SLI IE, where we shall draw final conclusions about their performance.